


Hotel Window

by rainbowninja167



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Fluff, Getting Together, M/M, Some very vague mentions of violence and danger, but they are on tour!, of that I am quite certain!, or should I say canon-adjacent?, since they could really be on any tour in any place
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-16
Updated: 2017-12-16
Packaged: 2019-02-15 11:33:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,585
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13030170
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rainbowninja167/pseuds/rainbowninja167
Summary: "The east and west are yours, and the north and south are yoursis written in the book's flyleaf in Gemma's neat handwriting. Harry reckons the inscription is true, although probably not in the way that she'd imagined. He can see all four corners of his universe: Niall against the window in the east, Liam and Zayn in front of the television to the south, and Louis curled up on the bed to his west."





	Hotel Window

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoy this strange little fic! As I've mentioned in the tags, this takes place in a canon-compliant-ish universe, where One Direction is on tour. Perhaps their first tour? But I've deliberately left those details vague. And I've also invented OCs rather than included anyone who would've really been on tour with them.
> 
> I've done this mainly because I wanted this fic to have a kind of dreamy quality to it. It made sense to me, given my _Leaves of Grass_ prompt, that this fic should be able to conceivably take place at any point on their journey. And if you want to hear more of my weird thoughts on the ways 1D aligns -- and sometimes really tragically misaligns -- with Whitman, you should totally come talk to me on [tumblr](http://rainbowninja.tumblr.com/)! Also, to be clear, I'd love to talk with you even if you _don't_ want an endless treatise on 19th century poetry...
> 
> Lastly, thanks so much to the mods for organizing this challenge. It's such a cool idea, and the moment I saw it, I knew I had to participate!

 

“The east and the west are mine, and the north and the south are mine. I am larger, better than I thought, I did not know I held so much goodness. All seems beautiful to me.”

“Song of the Open Road” in _Leaves of Grass_ \- Walt Whitman

 

Harry makes it as far as the lobby before he feels the familiar tug at the back of his hoodie that means Doyle has caught up with him. He tries to twist around, but Doyle has him secured by the scruff of his neck, Simba-style.

“Sorry Harry, but there’s been a change of plans,” Doyle says from behind him. The front of the hotel is only twenty feet away. Harry imagines wriggling out of his hoodie and just making a break for it, but he has a sneaking suspicion that Doyle would catch up with him almost immediately, and Harry assumes that the sight of a large security guard, fireman-carrying a teenaged popstar back to his hotel room, is the kind of thing that might cause a very public, very embarrassing scene.

“I know you lads were counting on going out today, but we’ve had some concerns about security,” Doyle continues.

“There are always concerns about security,” Harry mumbles, but he lets Doyle guide him back toward the hotel elevator and away from his own personal Elephant Graveyard.

The other four boys are together in Harry and Louis’ hotel room when Doyle returns with Harry. Zayn and Liam are sat at the edge of Harry’s bed playing FIFA, Louis is sprawled all over his own, and Niall is curled up on the window-ledge, half-attending to the FIFA match and half-attending to the view of the hotel lobby that can be seen through their window.

Only Louis looks up at the sound of the door opening, and his face scrunches into a frown in response to the despondence he can probably see on Harry’s own.

“It’s funny,” Zayn says, rather loudly, although his eyes remain focused intently on the game. “There haven't been any security concerns whenever we're scheduled for fan service. Not even that time in Brighton _…Yes_!”

“ _Shit_ ,” Liam mutters simultaneously, and his button-mashing becomes that much more frantic. Doyle finally loosens his grip on Harry’s hoodie.

“You know I’m not the one who makes those decisions. I’m just the guard,” Doyle says after a short pause, and Harry wonders if he’s imagining the slightly apologetic way that Doyle is shifting on his feet.

“He just wanted to see the park down the road,” Louis adds abruptly, and Harry is startled by the sharpness of his tone. Usually, Louis gets on shockingly well with Doyle, a friendship that frankly baffles the other boys, who know all-too-well of Louis’ personal crusade to push the boundaries of every other adult in their orbit.

It had initially annoyed Harry a bit. The moment their tour had started, Louis had made a beeline for Doyle. Louis had been both determined and charming about cultivating the friendship in equal measure, in a way he hadn’t been since…well…since he’d met _Harry._  And Harry had finally been driven to ask Louis about it. It had still been early in the tour. Harry had been coaxed into a few drinks in their dressing room after a show, and had wanted nothing more than to ride out his slightly tipsy adrenaline crash while cuddled up to Louis in the back of their tour bus. But Louis had spent the entire first hour of the ride in an intense-looking conversation with Doyle in the front. By the time Louis was stealing past Harry’s bunk and towards his own, Harry’s inhibitions had been lowered enough for him to ask, rather nastily:

“Sure you want to stay here tonight? It’s only where your _band_ sleeps, after all.”

Harry couldn’t actually see Louis through the curtain around his bunk, but he knew Louis had heard him by the way his slightly furtive getting-ready-for-bed shuffling went abruptly silent. The curtain shifted open a few inches and Louis’ sleepy, squinty face appeared in the opening.

“Harry, what--?”

“Never mind. I think I’m half-dreaming already,” Harry had said, instantly ashamed of himself. But Louis only regarded Harry thoughtfully in the darkness of the bus for a few quiet moments, before he’d seemed to come to a decision and shoved his way into the bunk.

They’d slept this way sometimes, in the _X Factor_ house and on those first few terrifying days of tour. It wasn’t something they ever really spoke about. Harry never knew how to raise the issue, or to ask for it to continue, and so their sharing-a-bed _thing_  remained subject to Louis’ unpredictable whims.

“I _want_ to sleep with the band,” Louis had whispered stoutly, his shoulder pressed almost uncomfortably into Harry’s. There was a beat, and then they’d both burst into muffled giggles.

“You know what I meant--”

“Liam already thinks you were angling for a five-way during the cabin weekend, just _wait_ ‘til I tell him--”

“I said ‘band _bonding_ ,’ it’s not _my_ fault he heard--”

Louis had shoved at Harry, hard, and they’d tussled quietly until Louis had nearly fallen out of the bunk and they’d been forced to call a whispered truce.

“Seriously, Haz, if you’re jealous or something, don’t be. It’s just that…he might be on our side, so I don’t mind if sometimes I have to be on his.”

“I’m not _jealous--_ ” Harry had hissed, and his flush of mortification had overtaken any questions he might’ve been tempted to ask about that second, more cryptic piece of what Louis had said.

He’d barely even remembered the conversation until several days later. It had been one of those legs of the tour where nothing seemed to go right. The traffic had been awful, so they were running hours behind schedule and Niall had just been violently carsick in the bus loo. Zayn had forced them all to stop at a dodgy rest area and was refusing all attempts to get him back on the bus, “or _I’ll_ be ill over everything, I swear it,” while Liam became visibly more anxious the longer they stayed there. But suddenly Louis was slipping off to coax Zayn away from the vending machine behind the public toilets and back onto the bus.

And Harry reckoned, then, that he finally understood the basis of Louis’ relationship with Doyle: the way their half-cheeky, half-commiserating alliance was reminiscent of an oldest child with a parent, or two diplomats always keen to avoid an outbreak of war.

***

So now, it seems particularly baffling that Louis would express such quiet fury in the face of Doyle’s disappointing -- but expected -- restrictions. Doyle, too, blinks at Louis in a state of mild shock, while Louis starts to sit up on the hotel bed as if preparing to have something out.

“You _promised_ him,” Louis says icily, which, while technically true, does not give Harry any better insight into the cause of Louis’ anger. Harry has been promised many things. Chief among them, the time and freedom to explore the cities they’ve visited this tour. And at first, he’d allowed himself to get excited at each new possibility. He’d researched tourist destinations during sound checks, and written Top 10 lists in his notebook, and babbled on about the different activities he’d planned. But Harry has long gotten used to those plans being thwarted for one reason or another.

“It’s fine,” Harry says. He makes his way further into the room and flings himself onto Louis’ bed as well. “Really.”

“It’s not,” Louis mumbles, and shoots Harry an almost _betrayed_ look. Harry just blinks at him, baffled, while Doyle beats a hasty retreat out of their hotel room, before Louis can launch into what’s shaping up to be a full-fledged row.

“Did you want to go out too, or something?” Harry attempts. He rolls a bit closer to Louis on the bed and nudges sympathetically at his side. Louis gives Harry a cryptic look in return.

“They shouldn’t lie to you,” is what Louis finally says. They’re very close together on the bed now, Louis’ face only a few inches away from Harry’s own, and there’s intensity to his expression that’s making Harry feel suddenly warm and out-of-breath.

“It’s really fine, Lou. I…um--” Harry swallows, and then loses his train of thought completely.

It’s not that he doesn’t _know_ his best friend is bloody gorgeous. Of course he does. Has known it, from the first moment they met in the loo at the _X Factor_ auditions, when a strange boy’s smile had been enough to knock the nerves right out of him. Louis has always been able to do that for Harry – to replace the anxious energy that sometimes runs through his body with something light and joyful and no less vibrant – and sometimes at night when they’re in their shared hotel room, Harry just stares at Louis sleeping in the other bed and worries about losing him.

Except that now, Louis is not in a far-off bed, and he is certainly not asleep.

Louis is still watching him in fact, careful and uncharacteristically serious. He tips his head forward slightly -- so slightly that Harry can’t tell if it’s deliberate or not, just as he can’t tell if it’s deliberate that his _own_ head is tilting forward as well. It’s like a balancing of scales. The very air between them feels precarious.

“Harry--” Louis says quietly, his eyes on Harry’s mouth, and he leans forward just a bit more --

“Fuckin’ _arsewaffle_!” Liam shouts, so unexpected and loud that Harry startles backwards and nearly falls off the bed.

“What the hell is an arsewaffle?” Niall asks, chin cupped in his hands as he stares at the TV screen, which is currently announcing Zayn’s resounding FIFA victory. Niall is very carefully _not_ looking in the direction of Harry and Louis, and Harry can’t decide whether he feels gratitude or distress for Niall's seeming policy of non-interference. _It would be helpful_ , Harry thinks, _to know that someone else had seen it, at the very least_.

Because now Louis is drawling easily from his side of the bed: “It’s what happens when you sit on a hot waffle iron, _obviously_ Niall.” And Harry wonders if he’d imagined the whole thing.

“It’s the feeling of _losing_ ,” Zayn adds with a grin, and ducks the controller that Liam has just thrown at him.

“Wanna play, Haz?” Liam asks, turning to give Harry a quick, oblivious smile. “Since we all know Zayn cheats?”

“I’m alright, thanks,” Harry interrupts Zayn’s squawk of wounded outrage to say. “Think I’ll just read for a bit, actually.”

Harry slides off the bed and rifles through his luggage, all while carefully avoiding looking back at Louis. It’s not that he’s _afraid_ , he just…can’t find his book. An excuse which, unfortunately, has a very limited shelf life, and so all too soon, Harry is straightening up with book in hand to hover indecisively between the beds. Although Louis glances up then to catch his eye, Harry finds he can’t read anything useful from it.

“Don’t be stupid,” Louis finally says quietly, and shifts over in an unspoken invitation for Harry to rejoin him on the bed. Harry obediently returns to his former place, but once he’s settled on the bed, he finds that he can’t focus on reading after all. He’s suddenly intensely aware of his own body -- every slight adjustment to his position feels like a tectonic shift -- and Harry imagines that Louis must be equally distracted by his inability to settle.

Harry tries flipping through his book, a copy of _Leaves of Grass_ that Gemma had given him as a gift on the night before One Direction went on tour.

_The east and west are yours, and the north and south are yours_ is written in the flyleaf in her neat handwriting. Harry reckons the inscription is true, although probably not in the way that Gemma had imagined. He can see all four corners of his universe: Niall against the window in the east, Liam and Zayn in front of the television to the south, and Louis curled up on the bed to his west.

_Behold my domain_ , Harry thinks wryly, and sighs. He glances over at Louis, who looks thoroughly intent on something on his phone, and has probably forgotten all about Harry anyway. Harry entertains a brief fantasy of dragging Niall into the loo to beg for a second opinion on whether they  _had_ almost kissed, right there on the bed in front of everyone, and what Niall thought Louis might  _mean_  by it, but he quickly discards this plan. He can't think of a way to get Niall _into_ the loo without drawing significant scrutiny, which would rather defeat the purpose.

Harry blinks down at his book, and turns a page.

“You really can see the whole hotel from here,” Niall suddenly comments from his perch by the window. Their hotel is shaped cylindrically, so that from the window of their room, they can see all the equivalent rooms across the way, as well as the lobby in the center of the ground floor.

“Yeah, you can see everyone else walking out the front door,” Harry mutters gloomily, and Louis glances up from his phone at last, a slight frown on his face.

“No, seriously. It’s actually pretty cool. There’s a man with three kids, but he’s just lost one -- he turned away to speak to the concierge and she’s hid behind a potted plant. I wonder when he’ll notice she’s gone?”

“’S a bit creepy, Nialler. How’d you like it if some random bloke was spying on _you_ from above?” Zayn asks.

“I bet Harry five quid he gets security involved before they find the kid,” Louis says abruptly and sets down his phone.

“Done,” Liam says, but Louis shakes his head.

“I did say ‘Harry,’ didn’t I? What d’you say, Hazza?”

Louis is giving him a variant on that vague, slightly blank smile that he’s started perfecting for interviews, and which Harry hasn’t yet learned to crack. But Harry can think of no real reason to turn down the bet, and so he makes a great show of sighing in petulant agreement.

***

It escalates almost immediately.

Harry doesn’t remember how they transitioned from bets to dares -- though he has a sneaking suspicion it was Louis again, since it’s seemed this whole morning like he’s been playing some private game of his own -- but before Harry knows it, he’s down in the hotel gift shop trying to charm a free souvenir bear out of the cashier. “For fame and glory,” Niall had said, to which Harry had responded that he had quite enough fame, thanks, but then Louis had said “ _please,_ ” all laughing entreaty, and well. Here Harry is. Grinning like an idiot at a _deeply_ unimpressed service industry professional whose name-tag reads “Anjali.” Harry's shoulders prickle with the knowledge that the others can see him from their bedroom window, and so, in quiet desperation, Harry tries to make his dimples intensify.

Anjali remains unmoved.

“It’ll be a perfect tour mascot for my band. Have I mentioned I’m in a band?” Harry finally tries, and then instantly hates himself for it. “Oh God, okay. Nothing can be more embarrassing than this already is, so look. My mate dared me to get this bear, and he’s watching right now, and I swear I’ll come back and pay for it right away, but--”

“You couldn’t have told him ‘no’?” Anjali asks, raising her eyebrows in a judgmental expression that Harry thoroughly deserves. But then he tries to imagine saying ‘no’ to Louis Tomlinson, and can’t help but laugh out loud.

“If you knew him, you’d understand,” Harry finally says. “He’s kind of…” He spreads his hands open in a helpless little gesture. Anjali’s eyebrows fly up even higher.

“ _Oh!_ ” she says, and smiles at him for the first time. “I suppose you could do stupider things to impress a boy.”

“Oh, no, I’m not--” Harry stumbles, but Anjali is already pressing the stuffed bear into his hands.

“Just, a word of advice?” she continues. “Maybe don’t lead with that ‘I’m in a band’ line. Makes you sound a bit wanky.”

“Erm--” Harry looks down at the bear in his hands, and then back up at Anjali. Both of them are giving him the same slightly maniacal smile. Best to beat a tactical retreat, then. “Thanks.”

“Good luck!” Anjali calls to him, as Harry makes a dash for the elevators.

***

Over the course of the afternoon, the five of them manage, at various points, to infiltrate the hotel kitchen and deliver someone’s room service, swim laps in the hotel pool while fully clothed, offer unsolicited weightlifting tips to the most performative men in the hotel gym, and steal something undetected from their manager’s hotel room. All while the stuffed bear looks on approvingly from his pride of place atop the television.

It’s approaching evening, and Niall is making vague noises about ordering room service themselves, when Louis interrupts with: “Hang on, what’s that?”

He’s stood at the window, and the other boys immediately crowd around him. Across the way, through the window-blinds of one of the rooms, they can see a shadow moving quite oddly.

“Is that one person?” Zayn asks, tilting his head to the left.

“I think it’s two?” Liam offers, squinting.

“Are they--?” Harry starts, about to suggest some variant on “having sex,” but then abruptly, one of the shadows seems to collide with the window before going completely still.

“Oh my God…”

“D’you reckon they’re hurt?” Niall whispers. The five of them watch in silent horror as the lump shifts down the window, almost as though someone is dragging it away.

“Lads, I think…” Liam begins shakily, and then doesn’t continue.

“What do we do?”

“Should we call Doyle?”

Louis seemed to snap to attention at that, because he blurts out: “I dare someone to knock on that door and investigate.”

“Lou, that’s mad,” Niall scoffs instantly. “You think we should waltz over there and be like ‘hello, how are you, _murdered anyone lately_?’”

“Well obviously not,” Louis retorts, annoyed.

“I’m not doing anything like that,” Liam insists, and despite all of Louis’ best efforts, they all stand pretty firm on the “no Murder Dares” rule, until Louis throws up his hands in frustration with them all.

“Fine! If you’re all too afraid, _I’ll_ go!”

He whirls around to leave the room, but Harry feels a sharp spike of something like panic, and his hand is shooting out to grab Louis’ arm before he can stop himself.

“Lou. Seriously. Don’t,” Harry says, and he hates the way his voice has gone all low and shaky, but he has the strangest feeling that if Louis marches out of here, Harry may never see him again.

It’s a familiar fear, Harry realizes with a sudden rush of clarity. He’s felt some variant of it every time he’s sat awake in their shared hotel room while Louis slept. Their life has been circumscribed for so long by hotels, buses, and green rooms, but there is nevertheless a part of it that, to Harry, still feels very much like uncharted territory. Although he knows he’s friendly – and people call him “charismatic” – the shifting relationships and alliances of all these people, stuck in these tiny spaces together, is like a map that Harry still can’t quite read. But it's territory that Louis has never had any problem traversing with ease.

Harry has always felt that the moment Louis wanted to, he could set off on an adventure that left Harry hopelessly behind.

“It’s OK,” Louis tells him now, giving Harry a cheesy grin and gently detaching his arm from Harry’s grip. “I’m a Teen Choice Award winner, I can only be killed by a stake through the heart.” And then, with a sarcastic wink, he’s gone.

There’s a brief silence within the hotel room, and then Zayn says “ _Shit_ ,” on a rush of breath that Harry thinks sums things up rather well. All four of them press up to the window.

They can see Louis crossing the lobby now. He looks casual and confident, and shoots the boys at the window a subtle two-fingered salute before he gets into the far elevator bank and disappears from their view.

The four of them wait, barely breathing, but everything seems still in the hotel room across the way. Minutes pass, and Louis still hasn’t returned to the lobby. Harry finds himself struggling to contain these odd little whimpers that keep trying to escape. Zayn is clutching at Liam’s arm, while Niall’s breath is starting to hitch alarmingly.

After several more minutes of nothing, Liam breaks. “This is stupid, we need an adult.”

“We _are_ adults,” Niall reminds him shakily, but Liam just rolls his eyes as he pulls up a contact on his phone.

“I mean a _proper_ adult, obviously. Doyle? It’s, uh, Liam? From the band? And, erm, Louis might be confronting a murderer.” Liam winces and holds the phone away from his ear. Harry can hear what sounds like violent swearing coming from the other end of the line.

“ _Liam from the band_ ,” Zayn scoffs under his breath, but he still looks almost painfully grateful.

Liam speaks to Doyle for a few more seconds, and then reports: “He’s going up with hotel security. I think they’ve got a key.”

Harry can’t look away from the window curtain to the Murder Room, which still hasn’t so much as twitched since Louis disappeared.

“We won’t be able to _see--_ ” Harry drags a shaky hand through his hair, and manages to get it completely tangled in his curls. He unsuccessfully tries to tug it free once -- twice -- before spinning on his heel with a snarl and heading toward the door.

“Hazza?”

“We can’t just _wait_ here,” Harry insists. It feels like all his cells are suddenly vibrating at a higher frequency than usual, jostling against each other and making it impossible for him to stay still. And without Louis here, there’s nobody who can help them slow down.

“I dunno if we should--” Liam begins doubtfully, but Harry has finally managed to tear his own fingers free of his hair, and it’s with something close to a sob of relief that he wrenches open their hotel door.

“Wait!” It’s Liam who has spoken, but Harry _can’t_ wait, because Louis could be hurt or worse, and he’s all alone, and Harry can’t just watch it happen from a distance anymore, he _can’t_ —

“We’ll come with you!”

They sneak through the lobby as quietly and quickly as they can. Harry doesn’t want to know what he would’ve done if someone had tried to stop them, but fortunately, they reach the hallway to the Murder Room just behind Doyle and hotel security, who are all too focused on the door ahead of them to notice the boys behind. The security guard knocks soundly on the door, but there’s only silence on the other side. They exchange uneasy glances and knock again. Just as they seem about to regroup and perhaps force the door, it swings open.

Louis is sprawled on the bed, phone in his hand, his head lifted toward the doorway and mouth half-open with the shock of seeing Doyle, the security guards, and his bandmates all crowding into the room in various stages of terror. Their stylist, Grace, stands in the doorway and seems similarly baffled.

There’s a moment of suspended quiet where they all simply stare at one another, and then Louis’ expressive face scrunches down into a vague frown.

“Why’d you bring Doyle? You were meant to come yourselves.”

And Harry bursts into tears: loud, unrestrained, and thoroughly unexpected, based on the way Louis pales and leaps off the bed.

“Harry, what--” Louis reaches out his arms, either in comfort or in supplication, and Harry throws himself into them. The feeling of Louis’ arms tightening protectively around his shoulders only makes Harry sob harder into Louis’ shoulder.

“You’re a real… _arsewaffle_ , you know that?” Zayn says shakily from behind them, and Harry can feel Louis' body stiffen, even as he continues to run a soothing hand up and down Harry’s spine.

“What is even _happening_ right now?” Louis asks.

“We thought you were _dead!_ ” Harry wails into the fabric of Louis’ jumper.

“What? Why?”

“Oh I dunno, Lou. What did you think we’d assume when you snuck into a Murder Room and _didn’t come back out_?” Niall’s voice is quiet and so sarcastic it borders on flippant, which is the truest sign that he’s utterly furious.

“I thought—I thought you’d come investigate,” Louis says. His voice has started to waver a bit, and his arms clench tighter around Harry almost inadvertently. It seems to finally be hitting him how much he’d frightened them. “I thought you’d think it was fun.”

“ _Fun?_ ” Liam wheezes, while Doyle gears up to deliver a loud and profanity-laden lecture.

“Hang on…” Niall says suddenly, frowning around at the hotel room. “There’s something about this… Oh. Fuck me, it’s _Rear Window_ , isn’t it? That Hitchcock film we watched on telly the other week?”

Louis shifts from one foot to the other. He tries to detach himself from Harry, which of course only makes Harry cling harder.

“You gave me the idea, Niall, when you said you could see everyone from the window. It reminded me of the film, and I thought it’d be fun--”

“ _Fun_ , Lou?” Liam repeats. “What about this was supposed to be _fun_?”

“James Stewart seemed to fancy it, didn’t he?” Louis grumbles. “And I was running out of dare idea, so I asked Grace to rent a free room across from us, and--”

“You paid for an entire hotel room just to trick us?”

For the first time, Louis seems genuinely uncertain. “Well…yeah? It’s not like I don’t have the money, and I wasn’t trying to _trick_  you, Jesus, I just— You were all looking forward to exploring the city _so much_ , and I thought maybe if this stupid hotel was more of an adventure, it wouldn’t be so bad, right? To be stuck indoors again.”

And while Louis might have been saying “you all” and “we,” he hasn’t looked away from Harry’s face once.

“Oh,” Harry murmurs through a sniffle. He realizes abruptly that he and Louis are still hugging, but neither of them seems at all inclined to stop. Distantly, Harry remembers the crowd still gathered around the hotel room door, but it seems like an unimportant detail in light of the way Louis is currently looking at him, with wide eyes and a mouth he’s been worrying into a tantalizing shade of pink.

“I didn’t mean for you to _cry_ ,” Louis insists, and indeed, he looks deeply traumatized about it.

“Just take me with you next time, yeah?” Harry asks, and Louis opens his mouth, no doubt to remind Harry rather crossly that he _had_ tried to dare them, but he must see something in Harry’s face that causes him shut it with a snap.

“’Course I will, Harry. Of course,” is what he says instead. The hand that’s been smoothing over the fabric of Harry’s hoodie now slides up to cradle the back of his head and tangle gently in his curls.

_And maybe_ , Harry thinks as he leans down to kiss Louis for the first time, _it’s as simple as that._


End file.
